Various techniques for metering a packet flow and marking its packets based on traffic parameters are known. For example, a single rate three color marker (srTCM) uses a committed information rate (CIR) and two associated burst sizes, a committed burst size (CBS) and an excess burst size (EBS), as traffic parameters. According to that technique, a packet is marked as green if it does not exceed the CBS, as yellow if it exceeds the CBS but not the EBS, or otherwise it is marked as red. The color of the packet is coded in a field of the packet's header.